Kent slams fellow Tory candidate, party over support for Tamil Tigers

TORONTO – Stephen Harper’s headaches didn’t end with the abortion controversy on Thursday.

In a rare act of mid-campaign dissent, cabinet minister Peter Kent criticized his own Conservative party for allowing a man who hosted a tribute to the Tamil Tigers to run as a candidate.

“It is certainly a reflection on the party’s lack of due diligence,” Kent told The Globe and Mail.

He was referring to the candidacy of Gavan Paranchothy, a Tamil broadcaster running for the Conservatives in Toronto’s Scarborough-Southwest riding.

“Someone’s obviously dropped the ball.”

Last November, Paranchothy hosted a program marking Heroes Day, an annual commemoration of Tiger fighters killed in the Tamils’ bloody separatist war in Sri Lanka. He called the dead militants “freedom fighters” and “heroes.”

Harper’s government labelled the Tigers terrorists in 2006.

Said Kent: “This program … is unacceptable and it flies in the face of the fact that our government listed the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist organization.”